Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 13/08/2006 19:22, Eric Weiss wrote:
> Dave Washburn wrote:
>
>   
> > Who published this New Testament you're looking at?...  
> > Sounds to me like you've got somebody's unsupported 
> > propaganda in your hands.
> >     
>
> That was my response, too, but I wanted something to hang 
> that on - i.e., some sources that would show, e.g., that the 
> Hebrew of the MT is NOT in large part "Medieval Hebrew" and 
> that the MT is patently not a re-translation from a LXX text 
> back into Hebrew.
>
> ...
>
>   
When was this book published? I suppose before the DSS were discovered 
this could not be disproved. But the discovery of the DSS has proved 
that the MT, at least its consonants, dates from before the Christian 
era, with only rather minor changes since then e.g. in the Isaiah 
scroll. The suggestion that MT is "medieval" is thereby completely 
disproved. It is hard to prove that the text is much earlier, but the 
Hebrew is clearly different from that of most non-biblical DSS and in 
significant ways closer to pre-exilic inscriptions. This strongly 
suggests that the MT text is to a large extent some centuries older than 
the DSS, and probably dates back to a period before Greek was widely 
known in the land of Israel - which would be rather inconsistent with it 
being a translation of any kind of Greek text.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/